by Casey Lane
She was also known as the “goddess of the hinge,” and so all doors, windows, and locks belonged to Carna. On her feast day, citizens cleaned, oiled, and repaired these fixtures, and nailed charms to their doorposts. It was traditional for Romans to feast with their families this evening, making offerings of beans, bacon, and other forms of pork to the goddess. They hoped she would reward them with good health. It was believed that eating these foods would bring the power of the goddess into them, infusing the worshippers with vitality.
A silly little festival, but they were common enough in those days. A nice excuse to shirk ordinary work and enjoy some frivolity. Things like these—along with bread and circuses—also tended to keep the public from rioting. Since I had no immediate family, and Egnatius considered me a brother, anyway, he invited me to celebrate at his home every year.
Late in the afternoon, I walked past the Temple of Jupiter, toward the food market and the Forum. Ah, the Forum. It was where business was conducted in the grain warehouses, where politicians made speeches on the steps of the Basilica, where priests tended the temples, where stallholders haggled with customers in the arcade. One of my slaves followed me, ready to make whatever bargains or transactions I needed. The Forum was usually crowded, but with so many official buildings closed, the crowds were thinner than usual. It allowed me to spot Egnatius, his entourage, and Sabine easily.
“Titus!” Egnatius smiled broadly and waved to me. Plastering a broad smile on my own face, I walked toward him. Although seeing him on this day was mere coincidence, he had no idea how many times Sabine and I had met here on purpose. On those occasions, it was easy enough to say we ran into each other inadvertently. Less public places would have granted more privacy, but also greater danger. The back alleys of Pompeii were as treacherous as any city during any age. They teemed with thugs all too ready to separate the unwary from their purses—or their lives.
True, our magic and my physical prowess could have dealt swiftly with troublemakers. But why deal with them at all when Sabine and I could spend time freely in the Forum, sending our slaves away on some errand, happily immersing ourselves in the seductive conversation taking place in our minds? Today, when I finally caught up with Egnatius and his other comites, Sabine and their slaves were standing demurely behind them. Sabine had a silk shawl draped over her head like a hood. We all bade each other the usual greetings.
“Didn’t expect to see you until the feast this evening,” Egnatius said to me. “I just returned from visiting my friend Pliny in Misenum. His nephew is in town. Anyway, Pliny was asking after the security of our African borders.” He ran one hand through what was left of his hair, now more white than gray. “I said we’d had a few problems here and there. But, for the most part, no one dares impugn the sovereignty of Rome in my provinces, thanks to our capable army.” He winked a wrinkled, droopy eyelid at me.
“No more trouble with the Berber tribes, I hope?” I asked.
Egnatius clapped me on the shoulder. “Not after the routing our Titus gave them the last time!” He laughed, and the other comites quickly joined in. “You all remember the way he slayed their men, destroyed their village, then let his legion have their pick of the women, and sold off the rest? I’m due to make another trip there shortly. Not as easy as it used to be, with these old bones of mine. But traveling should be much smoother than last time, what with the swath you cleared all the way to the coast.” He beamed at me.
“Are you certain I can’t go with you, my lord?” My voice was plaintive, yet in keeping with the commanding nature of my office. I wanted to seem ever eager to serve the proconsul, to always appear his faithful comite. People were much less likely to suspect I was sleeping with his wife that way.
Egnatius shook his head. “No, my friend. Nothing that will require your battle skills. Just dull, tedious tax assessments on Berber’s neighbors, I’m afraid.” He let out a long sigh.
“I see.” I let my face fall—and let Egnatius see it. I often made such offers, ones I knew would be refused. I had found out the purpose of Egnatius’s visit in advance, of course, and knew that he would have no need of my services. “Pity,” I added.
Egnatius chuckled. “Ever-faithful Titus! Always the same. Like a dog biting its chain: can’t wait to sink his teeth into the next piece of meat!” The rest of the group laughed again. I smiled indulgently. “Never fear, General,” Egnatius continued. “Plenty of wrongdoers around here the government could use your help with. I’m sure there’s enough in Pompeii to keep you occupied.”
I gave a quick glance to Sabine, which she caught, but her husband did not. “Indeed,” I murmured, and tried to fight the wider grin tugging at my lips. Sabine stroked the edges of the shawl closest to her face and smiled at me. “But tell me, Proconsul,” I said abruptly, “what is your opinion on the new weapons being developed by General Caelius? Do they represent a significant advancement over the previous versions?”
“Eh?” Egnatius was peering over my shoulder.
He’s looking at a graffiti advertisement for a new chariot race at the Circus Maximus, Sabine said in my mind.
“Oh, I don’t know, Titus.” Egnatius’s voice trailed off. “Whatever you think is best.”
I gave a satisfied nod. Just as I suspected. Military subjects—ones that did not involve victories he could brag about—bored Egnatius to tears. They were also helpful in throwing him off the scent of my affair with Sabine . . . should he ever care to pick up the scent in the first place.
But there seemed little danger of that happening right now. Egnatius stopped looking at the advert and leaned closer. “Do me a kindness tonight after we dine, would you?” he said in a low voice. “Let Sabine take you to the new tapestries—the ones woven with the silk thread you got us from India.” His rolled his eyes. “She’s been dying to show them off to someone.”
“As you wish, my lord,” I sighed reluctantly. After that, we soon parted ways, saying how much we looked forward to seeing one another tonight. Especially you, Sabine, I said in her thoughts, and we stole another lustful glance. As soon as my back was to Egnatius and the rest, I didn’t bother to hide my grin.
This is as easy as taking sweets from small children.
That night, after the usual pork and beans, dessert was served, along with more wine, and guests were left to wander around the dining room. There were only nine of us this time—a smaller banquet. Still, Egnatius and the others were too drunk to notice when Sabine and I slipped away. We left them alone to discuss grain prices, which taverns were closing or opening, and who was likely to be elected to which office this year. As soon as I shut the door to her bedroom, Sabine motioned to me urgently.
“I must speak with you,” she hissed.
“Of course,” I murmured. “But Egnatius will be occupied with those other fools for hours. And he did say you wanted to show me the new tapestries.” I maneuvered my hands into her stola until they found her smooth, warm skin, the way I’d done so many times before. “Are they in here, I wonder?”
Sabine slapped my arm—hard. I pulled my hands away. “Stop that,” she said. “I’m in earnest. This is a serious matter.”
“You didn’t seem so serious this afternoon. Just the opposite.” I kissed her shoulder. “I was under the impression you were in the mood for some levity.” I kissed the crook of her neck. “Very much in the mood.”
“Much has happened since then.” There was an undeniable darkness in her voice. She pushed me away.
“Such as?” My own voice darkened as well. I found myself wondering if she’d met another man, one younger than I. Thoughts flashed in my mind of how quickly I could find out who, and all the creative ways I could kill him. I did not share these thoughts with Sabine.
With her back to me, Sabine pushed her hands out from one another. A pair of curtains parted, revealing a tiny window. Sabine peered out. She pushed her hands together, and the curtains closed. She turned around, frowning.
Who—or what—is she lo
oking for out there, at this time of night? Or does she think someone will come looking for us?
“After you left us at the Forum, I slipped away from Egnatius and the rest—including my slave—to buy herbs for various spells.” She ran her hands over one another. “Dusk fell, and I was on my way home. That’s when I saw them.”
“Them?” I repeated. If it’s more than one man, I’ll have trouble killing them all undetected. Still, I was fairly certain I could manage.
“The cult,” she said emphatically, as though the answer were obvious. She sat down on the bed, smoothing the sheets again and again. “Men and women—a whole mess of them, drunk and making offerings to the goddess Carna.” Her voice lowered to a murmur. “She who opens things that have been closed, and closes things that have been opened.”
“Then I could certainly use her help tonight.” I sat beside Sabine and slipped my hand between her legs. She pulled it away roughly.
“This is no jest, Titus! You take great risk drawing her ire.” She fiddled with the emerald bracelet I’d given her from my last campaign, mindlessly turning it around on her wrist.
I let out a deep breath, and the tension in my body left with it. All is well. She hasn’t found someone else. I had no idea what had gotten her so wound up, but I was certain I could soothe her . . . and procure my own enjoyment in the process.
“I’m not worried about offending some minor domestic deity.” At the moment, I was more concerned with Sabine’s ire. It might turn her away from our bed, which I was sorely in need of tonight. There was always the option of taking what I wanted by force, but Sabine was not the woman to travel that route with. I got on my knees and began pulling her stola up, showing her I’d do whatever it took to relieve her uneasiness. “I’ll make an extra offering of bacon fat later tonight, I swear by all the gods.”
“They were making rites to Carna,” she repeated, brushing me aside and standing up. She paced the room. I was left kneeling in front of the bed, irritated and confused. “But Carna is about more than pork and beans. It is said that she alone marks the boundaries of this realm.” She pounded one fist into her palm, and paced faster. “Boundaries magical and mundane. She alone decides.”
“My love, I don’t understand. What does this have to do with—”
“She herself may be one of the doorkeepers of the world, the ianitores terrestres, guarding passage to the earthly sphere.” She went to the window as if to open the curtains and look out again. Then, her body snapped around abruptly, as if she’d changed her mind. “Surely you know that version of her name, cardo. How the Roman mortals repurposed it as the main north-south street of their towns. Did you never wonder why the surveying of these roads was attended by augural procedures aligning terrestrial and celestial space? Surely it is to honor her, to placate her.”
“Perhaps.” I stood up, my brow furrowed. “But placate her for what reason? Surely beings like us are in no danger from—”
“These cult rites were nothing like I’ve ever seen.” Sabine went on as if I weren’t there. She was talking madness, staring into space. If her movements weren’t so sharp and brisk, I’d have sworn she’d had too much wine. “Oh, they appeared ordinary enough at first glance. Several people in a corner of the arcade, in front of an altar, drinking from a chalice filled with wine. Five or six of them. Not patricians—probably a few common plebs. But I noticed something peculiar about them, about the contents of the chalice. It reddened their mouths and lips much more than ordinary wine. Then, there was their laughter.”
“What about it?” I lay back on the bed. Perhaps Sabine would take the hint. “Surely you’ve seen drunkards laughing before, your beloved husband among them.”
Sabine shook her head. “This was different. Their laughter sounded . . . odd. Like pieces of glass clinking together. Not like the sound a human would make.”
“Not human?” I sat up partway, suddenly intrigued. “They are like us, then?”
“No, not witches either. I noticed a few had cuts on their arms. Just minor scrapes: the kind mortals get all the time. But when they drank from the chalice, the cuts healed instantly!”
“So they are like us.” I sat all the way up, and leaned forward. “Fellow witches. We should find them and speak to them. I’ve never met another of my kind besides you.”
“No, they are not witches. Don’t you see?” Sabine wrung her hands. “Whatever was in that chalice healed them. It wasn’t their own magic. And though those who drank from it exhibited strength like I’ve never seen. One lifted an enormous column of broken marble beside him with his bare hands. With one hand, Titus!” She thrust her palm forward at me. “As if it were an apple he’d plucked from a tree. And their skin was pale and cold after they drank. It only lasted a few minutes, but it frightened me. For a moment, their flesh looked like stone. As if they had commissioned living marble statues of themselves. Then, it was gone.”
This was beyond bizarre. I’d never known Sabine to be frightened of anything, not in the entire time I’d known her. “Perhaps it was a trick of the light, beloved. You said it was dusk, after all.”
“It had nothing to do with the light!” Sabine gritted her teeth. “I know what I saw. And what I felt. I sensed the magic in the chalice—and all around them—right away. It was deeper and more powerful than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“Deeper than me?” I began winding the toga off my body, smiling at her. “More powerful than the feelings I give you?”
Sabine turned away. “They were too drunk to notice when I took the chalice.”
I stopped removing the toga, and stood there with a handful of cloth. “You took it? To do what with it? Make your own offerings to Carna, the goddess of the door hinges?” I placed my hand on my chest, feigning distress. “Fate protect us all from squeaky fittings!”
“Enough of your jibes, Titus!” Sabine whirled around, and raised her hand as if to strike me. “Yes, your precious Romans have absconded with Carna and made her the goddess of pigs and beans. But she is not to be mocked! She can open and shut celestial doors at whim. She could turn the world on a new axis if she wanted to. Planting beans is like planting any other type of seed. It could spring forth new life . . . or total destruction.” She lowered her hand.
“Yes, yes,” I said impatiently. I debated if I should continue removing my clothes. “And she is said to ward off strixes from babes left alone in their beds.”
“From what I saw tonight, I think those legends have it backward,” Sabine said somberly. “If you’d been there, Titus, you’d have seen it, felt it. This profound magic that seemed to come from the depths of the earth itself. I’ve lived for centuries; never have I seen the like. You forget the legends of the strix. Some are said to be demonesses who disguise themselves as mortals and drink their blood.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” I draped the toga back over myself—for now. “But you said the worshippers were all mortal. You were sure of it. You cannot believe such nonsense about demon goddesses.”
“What if it’s not nonsense? We exist. Why can’t there be other magics in the world?”
“Why this sudden religious fervor?” I asked. “You never gave any gods such reverence before. Your paranoia over this chalice is overcoming your good sense.” I don’t understand this at all, I thought to myself. I was under the impression she half-believed gods were figments of our imagination. What is it about this chalice that unnerves her so?
“That’s why I took it with me. To observe it, study it.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You mean you have it here? Didn’t the worshippers raise a fuss when you tried to collect it?”
Sabine shook her head. “They were far too drunk by then. I pretended to be one of them. I raised the chalice to my lips. I giggled and toasted Carna like the rest of them. A few of them were delighting in their new gifts, rising a few inches in the air, flying as we are able to do.” She waved her hand around vaguely. “But the drink had the usual effects of wine, or t
hey’d had a great deal beforehand. Eventually, they all wound down, like a spinning top that slows. Then, when they were too drowsy to notice, I hid the chalice in the folds of my stola and slipped away.”
“And no one else noticed these oddities? With all the crowds at the Forum, surely someone must have seen them acting . . . more than human.”
“It was dark at that point, and they were in a far corner of the arcade. With everyone rushing home to prepare their festival feasts, the worshippers went undetected. And a good thing, too,” she murmured. “Revealing such things could lead mortals to start asking questions about our kind.”
“And what if they crop up again, these worshippers?” I pressed. “What if someone catches them using their new powers? Or they throw caution to the wind, and in their drunken folly, demonstrate them for all of Pompeii? It might raise questions about magic. Talk of demons, of purging the empire of dark forces. Of people like us.”
“Impossible. The healing, the flying, the changes to the skin . . .” Sabine’s eyes searched the ceiling, the far corners of the room, as if for something that did not want to be found. “All seemed to disappear after a few minutes. I doubt they retained these powers, unless they had more of this special brew stored elsewhere.”
“Let us pray that they don’t.” I glanced at the tables around the room, to see if they held a flask of wine. But there was not even water. “The last thing we need is a witch hunt on our hands. But what did you do with the chalice? What if that idiot Egnatius finds it—or one of the slaves, while cleaning?”
Sabine put her finger to her lips, even though there was no one around to hear us. She bid me follow her out the door, which I did, grimacing. The farther away we got from the bed, the greater the odds were of ending the night unsatisfied. And it was the perfect opportunity for such satisfaction. I didn’t think Egnatius would find us for hours, and as we slipped through the hall, I saw I was right. We walked quietly by him and the other guests, passed out on couches, dead to the world by way of drink.
